So, if you were to see it burn up, would you be able to tell it from a meteor?

I think not - the only thing you might notice is that a re-entering satellite (travelling at "only" 7 kilometers per second) might appear to move more slowly across the sky than a bolide/fireball resulting from infalling solar system debris (travelling at 11 kilometers per second, at least, possibly much, much faster depending on the orbital geometry).

So, if you were to see it burn up, would you be able to tell it from a meteor?

I think not - the only thing you might notice is that a re-entering satellite (travelling at "only" 7 kilometers per second) might appear to move more slowly across the sky than a bolide/fireball resulting from infalling solar system debris (travelling at 11 kilometers per second, at least, possibly much, much faster depending on the orbital geometry).

Anyhow, GOCE is now GONE.

When something as large as GOCE breaks up it tumbles into thousands of pieces. A meteorite is one object that breaks and burns up quickly. A satellite may have tens of thousands of pieces which are being shed off as it tumbles into the upper atomosphere.

This is my first post. Wanted to share this pic of a smoke trail over S FL last night. Approx. 50 deg from horizon, looking south to east. Taken at 6:16PM Eastern. After checking several websites, think it might be a chunk of GOCE. Trail has an abrupt start and stop point. Definitely not a plane, this is not a flight path. Bright spot is the moon.

Wow, that might be it indeed! The time is about right. I haven't read the reports yet on whether it reentered in your location. Should be some verification indeed. I hope you got it! I was hoping somebody would!

Attached Files

I hate to be the party pooper, but I seriously doubt those photos are of GOCE. According to this site GOCE de-orbited very far south, almost at Antarctica, and it was seen breaking up near the Falkland Islands.

When I was in college many years ago I was involved in a group project where we had to design a reentry vehicle for a single astronaut. I was assigned the problem of reducing the number of g's the astronaut took. Our capsule was basically a mini version of the Mercury space capsule but the astronauts took well over 10 g's with that capsule. The Gemini capsules gave their astronauts only around 4 g's max. The way they did it was to offset the CG to one side so the ablative disk would not be perpendicular to the oncoming air but would instead have some tilt. This would provide lift which kept the capsule from reentering all at once. It would spread the deceleration out over many more miles. I wrote a computer simulation and while I was playing with it I found it was possible to have the capsule bounce off the atmosphere. It would start to reenter but then go back up high above the air. Of course it would have lost much speed and eventually come back down even harder the next time. I don't remember exactly how far it went but 5,000 miles was possible. The problem with comparing that to a piece of space debris is that the capsule was aerodynamically stable and the lift was always up. Broken satellite parts will probably tumble and the lift vector would sometimes be down.

The most likely explanation is that a jet plane made the streaks but I wouldn't rule out GOCE parts only because 5,000 miles is too far.

That's really interesting! You know I was at the California Science Center last Friday to visit the shuttle Endeavor and while I was there I took a look at the 3 space capsules they have as well (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo). I was noticing how the blast pattern on the Gemini heat shield was off-center and I was curious what that was about... now I know!

I remember reading somewhere that with satellites, certain parts might fall off sooner than others, like solar panels and such. I've been looking today in the news trying to see whether the breakup/burn took place over a protracted period, or was fast. No luck on my research, though.